The Prisoner – Nerdisthttp://nerdist.com
Fri, 18 Aug 2017 01:00:46 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8Giant Balloon Drone is Rover from THE PRISONERhttp://nerdist.com/giant-balloon-drone-is-rover-from-the-prisoner/
Sat, 09 Apr 2016 15:00:40 +0000http://nerdist.com/?p=388525The ’60s cult classic, The Prisoner, is remembered for a lot of reasons, including the mightily extensive list of ways Number Six had his brain bent out of shape by psychedelic manipulation. But perhaps the most surreal part of the show was Rover, the giant balloon entity that would appear out of nowhere, flop around, knock people off their feet, and then vacuum them up for a ride to who knows where.

Now, a German automation company, named Festo, has built a balloon drone reminiscent of Rover, and it sucks things up like this:

The balloon-gripper drone is an example of Festo’s FreeMotionHandling products, and is based on its earlier eMotionSphere. As you can see in the video above, it floats around thanks to its neutrally buoyant, helium-filled balloon body, and is able to propel itself from A to B using a series of small rotors fastened to an ultra-light carbon latticework around its waist. Then there is, of course, the pièce de résistance: a sucking vacuum gripper that slurps up objects for delivery.

Aside from being hilarious to watch (and listen to, check out 0:29 in the video), that gripping mechanism, which builds on Festo’s FlexShapeGripper technology, is actually modeled on a chameleon’s tongue. It works by enveloping the object intended for pick-up, and then adjusting the tongue-tube-thing’s volume with air pressure to fit itself snuggly around its cargo.

Ultimately, Festo is developing its eMotionSpheres and FlexShapeGripper technology in unison in order to create a self-sustained drone that can work in a factory, moving parts of all shapes and sizes—with that magical chameleon tongue-tube—from one location to another without assistance or supervision. Although somebody may want to keep an eye on it, or at least use it to keep an eye on the prisoners in the Village—’cause the similarity here is uncanny, as evidenced by a clip from the show:

What do you think about Festo’s balloon drone? Is it the perfect way to automate more factory labor, or is it better suited for harassing far-out ’60s super spies trapped in a weird enclave of sabotage? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!

]]>Movie Morsels: Which THOR: RAGNAROK Villain Will Cate Blanchett Play?http://nerdist.com/movie-morsels-which-thor-ragnarok-villain-will-cate-blanchett-play/
Mon, 11 Jan 2016 14:00:01 +0000http://nerdist.com/?p=353529It’s starting to get pretty cold out there, but the first Movie Morsels of the week has a few items that should warm your heart, including some exciting casting news for Thor: Ragnarok and the latest TV spot for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Plus, word on Ridley Scott‘s possible next project, the trailer for Matthew McConaughey‘s latest, and more!

Thor: Ragnarok

Clever ET pulled that old trick of pretending an actor has already been cast in a role to get confirmation about it from a co-star. In this case, the outlet asked Mark Ruffalo at this weekend’s BAFTA Tea Party, “Your Thor 3 co-star, Cate Blanchett, is here tonight, are you happy about that?” To which the actor replied…

“I’m so thrilled. I saw her at the Governors’ banquet here and heard that maybe she was circling, they were talking to her about the part, so I ran up to her and I was like, ‘Please, please, please make this work!’ She’s just one of the best, and to have her play a baddie is going to be really exciting.”

So while we don’t have final word from Disney that Blanchett has been cast, we know for certain that if cast she will play one of the film’s villains. The question, however, is which villain. I’d personally love to see the stunning Aussie cast as the Enchantress. But she’d make for an equally memorable Hela. Aw, let’s face it, Blanchett could wind up playing Beta Ray Bill and she’d still kick ass!

While it basically offers the same footage seen in the film’s latest trailer, there’s a new TV spot for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, featuring the titular titans (played by Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck) first meeting, under the auspices of one Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg).

As seventy-eight years old, Ridley Scott doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Between last year’s acclaimed The Martian and his upcoming Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott has also found time to begin discussing the long-in-development film adaptation of Patrick McGoohan’s classic 1960s TV series The Prisoner, about a government agent trapped in a deceptively lovely resort. A second Prisoner series was launched several years back by AMC, but garnered a lackluster response from audiences and critics.

Matthew McConaughey’s latest, Free State of Jones, is based on the true story of Newton Knight, a Confederate soldier in the Civil War who turns Union-sympathizing outlaw. Gary Ross directs the May 13 release, the first trailer for which has just arrived online…

Sarah Wayne Callies’ just can’t away from the thriller genre. After starring in Prison Break, The Walking Dead, Into the Storm, and USA’s new Colony, the actress appears in the supernatural nail-biter The Other Side of the Door, co-starring Jeremy Sisto and directed by Johannes Roberts. Due out on March 11, its first trailer has just landed…

Finally today, a new website for the acclaimed western The Revenant has been activated. An interactive VR-simulated experience, it allows you to experience Leonardo DiCaprio’s two-hundred mile trek in the film as the haunted Hugh Glass. Check it out here.

For the first round, I’m choosing one of the first TV shows that legitimately blew my mind: 1967-’68’s The Prisoner, starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan. McGoohan had been playing spy John Drake in the long-running series Danger Man (also called Secret Agent here in the States) which ran from 1960-1968. McGoohan at one time was even considered to replace Sean Connery as James Bond. He’d been playing a spy for a long time, and was getting kind of tired of it and wanted to stop. This gave him and Danger Man story consultant George Markstein the idea: what if a spy wanted to quit? What would happen to him? What if he didn’t break and they kept using stranger and more complex methods? How frigging weird would that get? How much acid should an audience take to watch it? These are all questions posed (but not necessarily answered) during the 17 episodes that all begin with the longest, jauntiest, and most explanatory opening credits sequence in TV history (probably).

The first episode, “Arrival,” began like this:

All subsequent episodes (except the finale) began with a variation of this:

FUN FACT: That awesome theme song was written by Ron Grainer who also wrote the Doctor Who theme.

Made and originally broadcast on Lew Grade’s ITV Network, The Prisoner was eventually sold and broadcast around the world, including CTV in Canada and CBS in the US. Initially, McGoohan had seven episodes in mind, then Grade talked him into doing 14, and then 17 when it was proving popular elsewhere in countries with longer seasons (here in America, for instance). Six of McGoohan’s seven were filmed first, then the next seven, and then the next three, before the finale was finally filmed. McGoohan and the writers had to come up with more and different ideas to fill the new episode number that they hadn’t originally planned on before. As a result of this, the show starts to get really, really weird as it goes on. But we’ll get to that in a moment.

The premise of the show, if you hadn’t gotten it from the opening titles, is this: An unnamed high-ranking secret agent, with lots and lots of information in his brain, suddenly and angrily says he wants to resign his post. He plans to leave the United Kingdom immediately and head somewhere tropical. His superiors don’t like this and are worried that he’s going to defect to the enemy. He is gassed and taken to a picturesque and idyllic place called simply The Village which looks like an Italian Renaissance Disneyland (filmed in the North Wales resort of Portmeirion). He is told he’s Number 6 and everybody else has a number as well. No one will tell him where he is other than “The Village” and there are no maps or roads that lead anywhere except back to it. The person in charge of the place, it seems, is Number 2 (played first by Guy Doleman) who tells Number 6 that it will all be a lot easier if he just cooperates. He does not respond favorably.

This is the beauty of the entire program: every episode, a new plan is hatched to try to get Number 6 to crack under the pressure and he refuses. The will of this one human is stronger than all the torment and torture technology has to offer. He does such a good job at resisting that Number 2 is fired and replaced every time they fail so each episode save a couple begin with a different person narrating and saying they are “The New Number 2” (see above). This constant turnover of Number 2 leads Number 6 to realize the person he really wants is the allusive Number 1, who may or may not even exist.

The plots of the Number 2s include: trying to make Number 6 think he’s lost his mind, making him think he’s escaped, making him think other people, usually female, want to help him escape and/or find Number 1, bringing people he knows into The Village to try to make him talk, putting him in a virtual reality scenario where he meets three different people in whom he might confide, conducting experiments on him and other similarly trapped peoples, and even just summarily trying to murder him. It’s clear by the end that they’re just getting tired of him and want to just completely destroy his brain. He’s quite the thorn in their side.

Now, the Village being a seaside town, there are boats and things that Number 6 can, and often does, attempt to use to get away, but each time he’s met by Rover, the guard and sentry of the place and the area where the show gets particularly sci-fi-y. Rover is, in actuality, just a large, white weather balloon. Not particularly impressive, but within the narrative of the show, Rover is omnipresent and nearly unstoppable. Number 6 tries many times to outrun it, but he can’t. It is impossibly fast on both land and water, and it can engulf its prey within its plastic membrane and take them back to Number 2. Pretty freaky.

Only two actors played Number 2 more than once; Leo McKern (in the above clip) played Number 2 in “The Chimes of Big Ben,” “Once Upon a Time,” and “Fall Out,” and Colin Gordon played Number 2 in “The General” and “A.B. and C.” An issue at hand, though, is that the episode order is incredibly jumbled and there are no fewer than five different “official” chronologies depending on which source you look at. As they were originally broadcast, McKern’s first episode was shown second, and his final two 16th and 17th. As they were shot, his episodes were 5, 6, and 17, and they were originally intended by McGoohan, they were to be the final three. Gordon’s were shot 10th and 11th, but when broadcast his first chronological episode was shown 6th and his second was shown 3rd, leading to a lot of weird confusion when he says “Number 2” instead of “The New Number 2” in the episode that was shown first but filmed second. Make sense? No. I don’t blame you.

The final three episodes shot prior to the finale were three of the strangest hours of television probably ever produced for mainstream television. “Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling” was filmed whilst McGoohan was on location filming the John Sturges action movie Ice Station Zebra. As a result, Number 6’s consciousness gets transferred to another body, that of actor Nigel Stock, who portrays our main character for the majority of the episode. “Living in Harmony” is a western in which Number 6 is a sheriff who resigned and he’s trapped in a town called Harmony in which people want him to be their new sheriff “by hook or by crook.” And “The Girl Who Was Death” is a nearly dialogue-free action story apparently set during one of Number 6’s more colorful spy missions, the finale of which takes place on a roller coaster. Just the weirdest.

And perhaps, strangest of all is the final episode, “Fall Out.” While it was pitched as one of McGoohan’s original 7, it wasn’t filmed until the very end when McGoohan had gotten really weird. It was following the three episodes above, remember, but it was meant to follow the 6th episode filmed. The tones are quite different. After having defeated McKern’s Number 2 yet again, Number 6 is allowed to enter the inner sanctum and meet Number 1. He doesn’t get to right away of course. First he has to go into a sort of Kafkaesque nightmare world where he and a strange hobo-ish prisoner called Number 48 are rewarded, sort of, for being rebellious, and Number 2 is punished for being not rebellious. There is a riot and Number 6 eventually sees Number 1, or does he? I will absolutely not spoil it for you; it’s a thing of perverse and troubling beauty.

A different essay could be written about each of the different episodes and how strange and brilliant they are, but for our purposes today, this will have to do. If you haven’t watched The Prisoner, I could not recommend it more highly to you. But what order should you watch them? Like everyone, I have a personal order in which I prefer to watch these episodes, so if you’d like to watch it The Kyle Way, do it the following (it’s not much different from the Fan Club order, but it is a little bit).

1. Arrival (The beginning, of course)2. Free For All (Number 2 makes Number 6 run against him in a public election)3. Dance of the Dead (Number 6 tries to save an old friend)4. Checkmate (Literally a giant chess match. Number 6 thinks he can tell the prisoners from the wardens)5. Chimes of Big Ben (A new prisoner may have info to aid in an elaborate escape attempt)6. The Schizoid Man (A duplicate Number 6 is introduced to make the real one lose his mind)7. The General (Number 2 plans to use a speed-teaching machine to remove Number 6’s independence)8. A. B. and C. (Desperate, Number 2 tampers with Number 6’s dreams)9. It’s Your Funeral (Number 6 must prevent the assassination of a Number 2 by his would-be successor)10. A Change of Mind (The Village ostracizes Number 6 for his “unmutuality”)11. Hammer Into Anvil (Number 6 plans revenge on the most sadistic Number 2 yet)12. Many Happy Returns (Number 6 manages to return to England not sure who to trust)13. Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling (Number 6 turns into a different guy)14. Living In Harmony (It’s a western!)15. The Girl Who Was Death (It’s a silent movie almost!)16. Once Upon a Time (An old Number 2 returns to put the final mental clamps on Number 6)17. Fall Out (The true nature of the Village is explained. Sort of.)

Also, there was a 2009 miniseries remake made by AMC starring Jim Caviezel as Number 6 and Ian McKellen as Number 2. It’s not very good, so avoid like Rover.

Next week we’ll look at Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but until then – Be seeing you.

]]>http://nerdist.com/british-sci-fi-tv-summer-rundown-the-prisoner/feed/810 British Sci-Fi Shows to Scratch Your DOCTOR WHO Itchhttp://nerdist.com/10-british-sci-fi-shows-to-scratch-your-doctor-who-itch/
http://nerdist.com/10-british-sci-fi-shows-to-scratch-your-doctor-who-itch/#commentsThu, 29 May 2014 16:00:21 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=152309We know roughly when the eighth series of Doctor Who will hit our screens (sometime in August), but that means we have a summer’s worth of time before we can see our favorite Time Lord brandish his sonic screwdriver again. Luckily, British science fiction television has been more than prevalent over the years, giving us some of the finest, and weirdest, storytelling of the small-screen age. And, lucky for you with limited time, most of them aren’t 50 years old and 800 episodes long. Below, I’ve compiled a list of 10 great British sci-fi program(me)s for you to tackle in the interminable gap between now and Whodom’s return. Chronologically of course, and each series has fewer than 50 episodes, so it’s not that big a time commitment.

Being the continuing adventures of the brilliant, stalwart head of the British Rocket Group, Professor Bernard Quatermass, this set of four serials was one of the earliest televisual marriages between science fiction and horror. Written by the incomparable Nigel Kneale, 1953’s The Quatermass Experiment tells of a mission to space that goes wrong and the rocket returns to Earth with only one of the crew alive, and badly infected by something. It eventually turns the man into a giant, hideous alien plant thing. Quatermass II two years later has the titular scientist looking into, and then being swarmed by, strange falling objects that turn into spores and could be the beginning of an alien invasion. The third serial, Quatermass and the Pit, featured an investigation into an apparent unexploded Nazi bomb, but is actually evidence of alien life on Earth long before humanity reared its head. These three serials were recorded by having a camera pointed at a live broadcast, a primitive but mostly effective method of keeping them intact. Only the first two episodes of The Quatermass Experiment exist, but they represent some of the earliest examples of British television still available.

In 1979, a fourth serial, simply titled Quatermass, was broadcast, on ITV this time instead of the BBC. It has Quatermass looking for his granddaughter who may have joined a cult of alien-worshiping young people, who may also be the pawns in an extraterrestrial scheme. This one’s not as good as the others, but it’s still enjoyable enough. The first three serials were also adapted into films by Hammer in 1955, 1957, and 1967, respectively. While the first two of these are fine, the third one is one of my favorite sci-fi movies ever.

The Prisoner (1967-1968)Total Episodes = 17

Boasting easily one of the coolest, and longest, opening title sequences in the history of television, The Prisoner, the brainchild of star Patrick McGoohan, is a paranoid fever dream from start to finish. McGoohan plays an unnamed secret agent who suddenly and mysteriously resigns his post, wanting to lead a quiet and spying-free life somewhere else. His bosses don’t seem to believe him and think he’s going to defect. They capture him and take him to the seemingly idyllic and isolated village called The Village where he is given a number (Number 6) and has to endure repeated questioning and attempts at coaxing the real reason for his resignation by the person designated Number 2, who gets replaced all the time for failing to achieve their goal. Number 6’s will is stronger than most, and by the end, he’s pushed everyone to the breaking point.

McGoohan initially had an idea for seven episodes, but ITV had him do 12, and then eventually 17, for sale in America. As a result, the four or so episodes toward the end are incredibly weird and out there, even more than the show usually is. The series also has one of the most troubling and ambiguous final episodes of any television series ever made. Ride your penny farthing bicycle and say “be seeing you.”

UFO (1970-1971)Total Episodes = 26

Not the last Gerry Anderson-produced show on this list. Anderson made his fortune creating and producing the “Supermarionation,” meaning puppets (Team America is aping Anderson’s work). UFO is his first live-action series and first not aimed at children, but it still employs a great deal of the hallmarks of Supermarionation in the special effects department. The series follows the Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization, or SHADO, as they attempt to thwart a constant threat of aliens from a dying planet who want to abduct humans and harvest their organs. They have to use their highly advanced technology to battle these aliens while keeping the imminent danger a secret from humankind. Despite having aired in 1970, and being set in 1980, there is perhaps no show that screams “THE 1960s!!!” at you like this one. It’s a delight.

Space: 1999 (1975-1977)Total Episodes = 48 (but really you could just watch the first 24)

Another Gerry Anderson show, and another awesome title song. This series had the dubious honor of being the most expensive series ever produced at the time and also the final series produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson as a duo. In the first episode, nuclear waste deposits on the far side of the moon explode, sending the moon and all 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha hurtling through space. Earth, we can assume, is completely screwed now without the moon to control the tides and things. The series is known for its gorgeous special effects and visuals, as well as having the tone and style of the show entirely changed between seasons, following a brief cancellation. Season 1 is like sci-fi morality plays with the people on the moonbase having to learn to coexist while strange things happen around them. Season 2 was made a bit more Star Treky, with the addition of alien characters and laser battles and things like that. Many of the Season 1 cast, aside from leads Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, were completely replaced before the second season also, making it as close to a new show as possible. I personally prefer the first year, but there’s plenty to enjoy in Year 2.

Sapphire & Steel (1979-1982)Total Episodes = 34

Quite simply one of the strangest and spookiest television shows ever made, Sapphire & Steel is like science fiction ghost stories with the theory that time disruptions cause spectral anomalies. The leads, Sapphire played by Joanna Lumley and Steel played by David McCallum, are, it can be reasoned, the actual human embodiment of their namesake metals/gems. They are agents for some strange and otherworldly organizations whose job it is to correct these temporal anomalies, using psychic abilities and their vast knowledge of time. They are certainly cold and inhuman, which also adds to the tension and creepiness factor. Each of the series’ six stories, or “Assignments,” consist of multiple 25-minute episodes. The beauty of the show is its simplicity. Each of the Assignments takes place only within one location, albeit with many rooms a lot of the time. The first serial, for instance, takes place in a country home in which a young boy’s little sister is trapped by time ghosts in her room. The second, and my favorite, is in an old rundown train station in which soldiers killed in the World Wars appear at random intervals during the night. The casts remain small, but the atmosphere is chilling.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981)Total Episodes = 6

The televised version of Douglas Adams’ award-winning radio show turned into a novel and an LP and a stage show and then much later became a feature film about a simple Earthman in his pajamas named Arthur Dent who, along with his friend, the alien Ford Prefect, narrowly escape the destruction of Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. They travel through space along with the two-headed egomaniac Zaphod Beeblebrox and brilliant mathematician and scientist Trillian. Arthur’s out of his element, of course, but luckily he has The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a book which talks to him, and us, about the various weird things you can see in the universe. It’s probably one of the most well-written pieces of fiction in the modern age and the television series loses none of Adams’ signature wit and witticism. I mean, how could you not find the depiction of Marvin the Paranoid Android endearing, like a metallic Eeyore?

The Day of the Triffids (1981)Total Episodes = 6

Another short one based on a book, and a movie, The Day of the Triffids is a pretty terrifying concept, wherein people watching a freak meteor shower go blind from the sight of it, all except a man who just happened to be in hospital with his eyes bandaged, and a few other people as well. He’s also a Triffid farmer, which is interesting being that triffids are something this story made up: mobile carnivorous plants. With most of the British population having been made sightless, the Triffids begin to run amok and devour the helpless populace. It’s really good survivalist fiction, and quite apocalyptic, especially for low-budget 1980s British television.

Life On Mars (2006-2007)Total Episodes = 16

Jumping way into the future, but also into the past (time, meet wime), Life on Mars plays like a regular cop procedural with a bit of Quantum Leap and some paranoid delusion thrown in. As it says in the opening scrawl, Sam Tyler is a police officer from present day who gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973 wherein he joins the Manchester and Salford Police as a Detective Inspector working with the self-proclaimed “Sheriff of Manchester,” Gene Hunt. The two are constantly at odds with each other, what with Gene’s beat-people-up-to-keep-order mentality clashing severely with Sam’s modern, by-the-book approach. There’s also a lot in the series about whether or not Sam actually is back in time or if he’s just a crazy person or if he’s caught in some kind of netherworld between life and death. It makes for interesting throughlines for both series, and Sam uses cases he’s working on in the present to help with cases in the past, and vice versa.

Ashes to Ashes (2008-2010)Total Episodes = 24

If you like Life On Mars, you may as well watch this one too. A spinoff of the first show, this series follows Alex Drake, a Detective Inspector looking into the disappearance of Sam Tyler after his brief return from the past. While being called out on a kidnapping case, Alex is shot in the head and wakes up in 1981 London, where, somehow, Gene Hunt and two of his cronies from the 1970s are also working/in charge. Alex believes herself to be inside a delusion, or within Sam Tyler’s delusion, and she wants to get out as quickly as she can, but that’s not as easy as it sounds. By the end of the series, the true nature of these trips to the past, as well as Gene Hunt himself, come into the light, and it’s a lot darker and more apocalyptic than you could have imagined. I like both series, but I think I actually like Ashes to Ashes more, despite the music in Life On Mars being infinitely superior.

Misfits (2009-2013)Total Episodes = 37

And finally, a series that just finished last year. Five young people in community service for various reasons are caught in a freak lightning storm and they each develop a distinct superpower based somewhat on their own flaws. Unlike most times this happens, these kids are not who you want to have powers, and they are more of a curse than anything else. Lots of other people living on or around their housing estate also obtain powers, and our main characters have to stop them, usually through a lot of violence and the death of at least one probation worker. It’s a surprisingly dark series, but with a great deal of humor along the way. It’s got a little bit of horror mixed in there, but it’s mainly about how average screw-ups would deal with getting these amazing abilities and how it’s probably not the best for anyone involved. It’s like Heroes but without the nobility.

So there you have it, ten series for you to pick at and enjoy whilst we await the return of Doctor Who. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be doing larger write-ups of some of these, my favorite ones, so if you’re still not sold, come back and you’ll get the full treatment.